The transition between dialects and separate language is fluid,[2] some Moselle Franconian dialects have developed into standardized varieties, which can be considered separate languages, especially due to the limited intelligibility of some dialects for pure Standard German speakers:

Germany
–
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular

France
–
France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territ

1.
One of the Lascaux paintings: a horse – Dordogne, approximately 18,000 BC

Luxembourg
–
Luxembourg /ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east and its culture, people and languages are highly intertwined with its neighbours, making it essentially a mixture of French and Germanic cultures. It comprises two regio

3.
Photograph of the fortress of Luxembourg prior to demolition in 1867

4.
Luxembourg City: The Passerelle, also known as the viaduct or old bridge, over the Pétrusse river valley, opened 1861

Belgium
–
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers w

Romania
–
Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-

North Rhine-Westphalia
–
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with a population of approximately 18 million, and the fourth largest by area. Its capital is Düsseldorf, the most populous city is Cologne, four of Germanys ten largest cities—Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, and Essen—are located within the state, as well as the largest metropolitan area

Rhineland-Palatinate
–
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of 19,846 square kilometres and about four million inhabitants, Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany and borders Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland. The sta

Saarland
–
The Saarland is one of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany. With its capital at Saarbrücken, it has an area of 2,570 km², in terms of both area and population size – apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg – it is Germanys smallest state. Prior to its creation as the Territory of the Saar Basin by the League of Na

1.
A postage stamp from the French occupation of Saarland (Sarre in French)

Language family
–
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the pr

Indo-European languages
–
The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with ove

1.
Franz Bopp, pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.

Germanic languages
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It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 mi

1.
Countries where a Germanic language is the first language of the majority of the population

West Germanic languages
–
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages. The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch, additionally, several creoles, patois, and pidgins are based on Dutch and English as they were languages of colonial empires. The West Germanic languages share

High German languages
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They are also spoken in diaspora in Romania, Russia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia. The High German languages are marked by the High German consonant shift, separating them from Low German and Low Franconian within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. As a technical term, the high in High German is a r

Isogloss
–
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some syntactic feature. However, an individual isogloss may or may not have any coincidence with a language border, for example, the front-rounding of /y/ cuts across France a

Standard German
–
Standard German is the standardized variety of the German language used in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas. It is a pluricentric Dachsprache with three codified specific regional variants, German Standard German, Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German, adherence is obligatory not for everyday use b

1.
The national and regional standard varieties of the German language.

Rhineland
–
The Rhineland is the name used for a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine River, chiefly its middle section. In the High Middle Ages, numerous Imperial States along the river emerged from the stem duchy of Lotharingia. The term covered the whole occupied zone west of the Rhine including the bridge-heads on the eastern banks, afte

Moselle
–
The Moselle is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg, and Germany. It is a tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is also drained by the Moselle through the Sauer, the Moselle twists and turns its way between Trier and Koblenz along one of Germanys most beautiful river valleys. It flows through a region that

Siegerland
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The Siegerland is a region of Germany covering the old district of Siegen and the upper part of the district of Altenkirchen, belonging to the Rhineland-Palatinate adjoining it to the west. Geologically, the Siegerland belongs to the Rheinisches Schiefergebirge, the point of highest elevation is the Riemen, at 678 metres above sea level. The region

German-speaking Community of Belgium
–
The German-speaking Community of Belgium is one of the three federal communities of Belgium. Covering an area of 854 km2 within the province of Liège in Wallonia, traditionally speakers of Low Dietsch, Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian varieties, the local population numbers over 75, 000—about 0. 70% of the national total. Bordering the Netherlands,

1.
The Executive (government) of the German-speaking Community meets in Eupen.

4.
The seat of the Executive and Council of the German-speaking Community in Eupen

Moselle (department)
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Moselle is the most populous department in Lorraine, in the east of France, and is named after the river Moselle, a tributary of the Rhine, which flows through the western part of the department. Inhabitants of the department are known as Mosellans, Moselle is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4,1790.

Transylvanian Saxon dialect
–
Transylvanian Saxon is the German dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons. It belongs to the Moselle Franconian group of West Central German dialects, the language was mainly spoken in Transylvania, Romania by persons of German origin who settled there in the 12th century. The majority of the speakers have emigrated in several waves to Germany, Austria

1.
Areas where Transylvanian Saxon was spoken in 1918.

Transylvania
–
Transylvania is a historical region located in what is today the central part of Romania. Bound on the east and south by its borders, the Carpathian mountain range. The term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the regions of Crișana, Maramureș. The region of Transylvania is known for the beauty of its Carpathian landscape.

Transylvanian Saxons
–
The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of German ethnicity who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards. The colonization of Transylvania by Germans was begun by King Géza II of Hungary, for decades, the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary. The colonization continued until the

Luxembourgish
–
Luxembourgish, Luxemburgish or Letzeburgesch is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. Worldwide, about 390,000 people speak Luxembourgish, despite the lack of a sharp boundary between Luxembourgish and the neighboring German dialects, this has led several linguists to regard it as a separate, yet closely related language. Lu

Lorraine Franconian
–
The term Lorraine Franconian has multiple denotations. Some scholars use it to refer to the group of West Central German dialects spoken in the French Lorraine region. In 1806 there were 218,662 speakers of Lorraine Franconian in Moselle and 41,795 speakers in Meurthe. In part from the ambiguity of the term, estimates of the number of speakers of L

2.
Lorraine Franconian

Brazil
–
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological syst

Rhine Franconian
–
Rhine Franconian, or Rhenish Franconian, is a dialect family of West Central German. It comprises the German dialects spoken across the regions of the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, northwest Baden-Wurttemberg. It is also spoken in northeast France, in the part of the département of Moselle in the Lorraine region. Hessian Palatinate Germ

Meuse-Rhenish
–
Meuse-Rhenish is a modern term that refers to the literature written in the Middle Ages in the greater Meuse-Rhine area. This area stretches in the triangle roughly between the rivers Meuse and Rhine. It also applies to the Low Franconian dialects that have spoken in that area in continuation from mediaeval times up to now. It includes varieties of

1.
Isogloss definition of Rheinmaaslandisch by Arend Mihm

International Standard Book Number
–
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning

1.
A 13-digit ISBN, 978-3-16-148410-0, as represented by an EAN-13 bar code

Integrated Authority File
–
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library netw

1.
GND screenshot

LIST OF IMAGES

1.
Germany
–
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed

2.
France
–
France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks

3.
Luxembourg
–
Luxembourg /ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east and its culture, people and languages are highly intertwined with its neighbours, making it essentially a mixture of French and Germanic cultures. It comprises two regions, the Oesling in the north as part of the Ardennes massif. With an area of 2,586 square kilometres, it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe, Luxembourg had a population of 524,853 in October 2012, ranking it the 8th least-populous country in Europe. As a representative democracy with a monarch, it is headed by a Grand Duke, Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a country, with an advanced economy and the worlds highest GDP per capita. Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, OECD, United Nations, NATO, and Benelux, reflecting its political consensus in favour of economic, political. The city of Luxembourg, which is the capital and largest city, is the seat of several institutions. Luxembourg served on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2013 and 2014, around this fort, a town gradually developed, which became the centre of a state of great strategic value. In the 14th and early 15th centuries, three members of the House of Luxembourg reigned as Holy Roman Emperors, in the following centuries, Luxembourgs fortress was steadily enlarged and strengthened by its successive occupants, the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the French. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Luxembourg was disputed between Prussia and the Netherlands and this arrangement was revised by the 1839 First Treaty of London, from which date Luxembourgs full independence is reckoned. In 1842 Luxembourg joined the German Customs Union, the King of the Netherlands remained Head of State as Grand Duke of Luxembourg, maintaining a personal union between the two countries until 1890. At the death of William III, the throne of the Netherlands passed to his daughter Wilhelmina and this allowed Germany the military advantage of controlling and expanding the railways there. In August 1914, Imperial Germany violated Luxembourgs neutrality in the war by invading it in the war against France and this allowed Germany to use the railway lines, while at the same time denying them to France. Nevertheless, despite the German occupation, Luxembourg was allowed to maintain much of its independence, in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, Luxembourgs neutrality was again violated when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany entered the country, entirely without justification. A government in exile based in London supported the Allies, sending a group of volunteers who participated in the Normandy invasion. Luxembourg was liberated in September 1944, and became a member of the United Nations in 1945. Luxembourgs neutral status under the constitution formally ended in 1948, in 2005, a referendum on the EU treaty establishing a constitution for Europe was held

Luxembourg
–
Historic map (undated) of Luxembourg city's fortifications
Luxembourg
–
Flag
Luxembourg
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Photograph of the fortress of Luxembourg prior to demolition in 1867
Luxembourg
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Luxembourg City: The Passerelle, also known as the viaduct or old bridge, over the Pétrusse river valley, opened 1861

4.
Belgium
–
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie

5.
Romania
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Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, the River Danube, Europes second-longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romanias Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest are marked by one of their tallest peaks, Moldoveanu, modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war, following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition towards democracy and it has been a member of NATO since 2004, and part of the European Union since 2007. A strong majority of the population identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are speakers of Romanian. The cultural history of Romania is often referred to when dealing with artists, musicians, inventors. For similar reasons, Romania has been the subject of notable tourist attractions, Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning citizen of Rome. The first known use of the appellation was attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, after the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a leader of the early 19th century. The use of the name Romania to refer to the homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861, in English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975, Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the region of the earliest European civilization. Evidence from this and other sites indicates that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage

6.
North Rhine-Westphalia
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North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with a population of approximately 18 million, and the fourth largest by area. Its capital is Düsseldorf, the most populous city is Cologne, four of Germanys ten largest cities—Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, and Essen—are located within the state, as well as the largest metropolitan area on the European continent, Rhine-Ruhr. North Rhine-Westphalia was formed in 1946 as a merger of the provinces of North Rhine and Westphalia, the state has been run by a coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens since 2010. The Ubii and some other Germanic tribes such as the Cugerni were later settled on the west side of the Rhine in the Roman province of Germania Inferior, North of the Sigambri and the Rhine region were the Bructeri. By the 8th century the Frankish dominion was established in western Germany. But at the time, to the north, Westphalia was being taken over by Saxons pushing south. The Merovingian and Carolingian Franks eventually built an empire which controlled first their Ripuarian kin, the Ottonian dynasty had both Saxon and Frankish ancestry. As the central power of the Holy Roman Emperor weakened, the Rhineland split into small independent principalities, each with its separate vicissitudes. Such struggles as the War of the Limburg Succession therefore continued to create military, Aachen was the place of coronation of the German emperors, and the ecclesiastical principalities of the Rhine bulked largely in German history. Prussia first set foot on the Rhine in 1609 by the occupation of the Duchy of Cleves and about a century later Upper Guelders and Moers also became Prussian. At the peace of Basel in 1795 the whole of the bank of the Rhine was resigned to France. In 1920, the districts of Eupen and Malmedy were transferred to Belgium, around 1 AD there were numerous incursions through Westphalia and perhaps even some permanent Roman or Romanized settlements. The Battle of Teutoburg Forest took place near Osnabrück and some of the Germanic tribes who fought at this came from the area of Westphalia. Charlemagne is thought to have spent considerable time in Paderborn and nearby parts and his Saxon Wars also partly took place in what is thought of as Westphalia today. Popular legends link his adversary Widukind to places near Detmold, Bielefeld, Lemgo, Osnabrück, Widukind was buried in Enger, which is also a subject of a legend. Along with Eastphalia and Engern, Westphalia was originally a district of the Duchy of Saxony, in 1180 Westphalia was elevated to the rank of a duchy by Emperor Barbarossa. The Duchy of Westphalia comprised only an area south of the Lippe River. Parts of Westphalia came under Brandenburg-Prussian control during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, signed in Münster and Osnabrück, ended the Thirty Years War

7.
Rhineland-Palatinate
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Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of 19,846 square kilometres and about four million inhabitants, Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany and borders Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland. The state of Rhineland-Palatinate dates from 30 August 1946, as of 201044. 9% of the population of the state adhered to the Roman Catholic Church,30. 6% to the Evangelical Church in Germany. 22. 0% of the population is irreligious or adheres to other religions, muslims made up 2. 5% of the total. The league of ShUM-cities in the later Rhineland-Palatinate comprised the Jewish communities of Mainz, Speyer, the Takkanot Shum, or Enactments of ShUM were a set of decrees formulated and agreed upon over a period of decades by their Jewish community leaders. Rhineland-Palatinate leads all German states with a rate of approximately 50%. Important sectors are the industry, chemical industry, pharmaceutical industry. Distinctive regional industries includes gemstone industry, ceramic and glass industry, small and medium enterprises are considered the backbone of the economy in Rhineland-Palatinate. The principal employer is the chemical and plastics processing industry which is represented by BASF in Ludwigshafen, boehringer, Joh. A. Benckiser, SGE Deutsche Holding, Schott Glassworks concludes the top 5 companies in the state. Rhineland-Palatinate is Germanys leading producer of wine in terms of grape cultivation, of thirteen wine regions producing quality wine in Germany, six are located in Rhineland-Palatinate, with 65% to 70% of the production of wine grapes in Germany having their origin within the state. 13,000 wine producers generate 80% to 90% of the German wine export, traditional grape varieties and a wide range of varieties developed during the last 125 years are characteristic for the region. Classical white varieties are cultivated at 63,683 hectares and these comprise the famous Rieslings 14,446 hectares, Müller-Thurgau, Silvaner and Kerner. The share of red varieties grew constantly during the last decades, dornfelder, a new cultivar, is the leading red grape cultivated on 7,626 hectares, which is more than a third. Blauer Portugieser and Spätburgunder show also appreciable cultivated shares, the state supports the wine industry by providing a comprehensive consultancy and education program in the service supply centers of the land. The Geilweilerhof Institute for Grape Breeding is fully financed by the state, many well known new breeds, such as Morio-Muskat, Bacchus, Optima and Regent have been created in these institutes. The worldwide leader in sparkling wine production, producing 245 million bottles in 2006, is the renowned Schloss Wachenheim Group and this company is headquartered in Trier, with operations in several locations in Rhineland-Palatinate

8.
Saarland
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The Saarland is one of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany. With its capital at Saarbrücken, it has an area of 2,570 km², in terms of both area and population size – apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg – it is Germanys smallest state. Prior to its creation as the Territory of the Saar Basin by the League of Nations after World War I, until then, some parts of it had been Prussian while others belonged to Bavaria. The inhabitants voted to rejoin Germany in a referendum held in 1935, from 1947 to 1956 the Saarland was a French-occupied territory separate from the rest of Germany. Between 1950 and 1956, Saarland was a member of the Council of Europe, in 1955, in another referendum, the inhabitants were offered independence, but voted instead for the territory to become a state of West Germany. From 1920 to 1935, and again from 1947 to 1959, Saarland is the result of a regulation of the treaty of Versailles and was created in 1919. Prior to this creation, there never existed a comparable administrative unit or a feeling of togetherness, the region of the Saarland was settled by the Celtic tribes of Treveri and Mediomatrici. The most impressive relic of their time is the remains of a fortress of refuge at Otzenhausen in the north of the Saarland, in the 1st century BC, the Roman Empire made the region part of its province of Belgica. The Celtic population mixed with the Roman immigrants, the region gained wealth, which can still be seen in the remains of Roman villas and villages. Roman rule ended in the 5th century, when the Franks conquered the territory, for the next 1,300 years the region shared the history of the Kingdom of the Franks, the Carolingian Empire and of the Holy Roman Empire. The region of the Saarland was divided into small territories. Most important of the rulers were the counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken. It was not the king of France but the armies of the French Revolution who terminated the independence of the states in the region of the Saarland, after 1792 they conquered the region and made it part of the French Republic. While a strip in the west belonged to the Département Moselle, the centre in 1798 became part of the Département de Sarre, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the region was divided again. Most of it part of the Prussian Rhine Province. Another part in the east, corresponding to the present Saarpfalz district, was allocated to the Kingdom of Bavaria, a small part in the northeast was ruled by the Duke of Oldenburg. On 31 July 1870, the French Emperor Napoleon III ordered an invasion across the River Saar to seize Saarbrücken, the first shots of the Franco-Prussian War 1870/71 were fired on the heights of Spichern, south of Saarbrücken. The Saar region became part of the German Empire which came into existence on 18 January 1871, in 1920 the Saargebiet was occupied by Britain and France under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles

Saarland
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A postage stamp from the French occupation of Saarland (Sarre in French)
Saarland
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Flag
Saarland
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" Saarschleife " (Bend in the Saar) near Mettlach

9.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others

10.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD

11.
Germanic languages
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It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, the last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown, as some of them—especially East Germanic languages—disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Proto-Germanic, along all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC, to settle in the area of todays northern Germany, furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It is also a language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, a German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States. Dutch is a language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao. The Netherlands also colonised Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as a language after Indonesian independence. Dutch was until 1925 an official language in South Africa, but evolved in and was replaced by Afrikaans, Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations as well, low German is a collection of sometimes very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Luxembourgish is mainly spoken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, though it extends into small parts of Belgium, France. Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in the Åland Islands. Danish is also spoken natively by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Icelandic is the language of Iceland, and is spoken by a significant minority in the Faroe Islands

Germanic languages
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Countries where a Germanic language is the first language of the majority of the population

12.
West Germanic languages
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The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages. The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch, additionally, several creoles, patois, and pidgins are based on Dutch and English as they were languages of colonial empires. The West Germanic languages share many lexemes not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic—archaisms as well as common neologisms, most scholars doubt that there was a Proto-West-Germanic proto-language common to the West Germanic languages and no others, though a few maintain that Proto-West-Germanic existed. Although there is quite a bit of knowledge about North Sea Germanic or Anglo-Frisian, linguists know almost nothing about Weser-Rhine Germanic, in fact, these two terms were coined in the 1940s to refer to groups of archeological findings rather than linguistic features. Only later were these terms applied to hypothetical dialectal differences within both regions, the rhotacism of /z/ to /r/. The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this, rhotacism, for example, was largely complete in West Germanic at a time when North Germanic runic inscriptions still clearly distinguished the two phonemes. However, there are also a number of common archaisms in West Germanic shared by neither Old Norse nor Gothic, the debate on the existence of a Proto-West-Germanic clade was recently summarized, That North Germanic is. A unitary subgroup is completely obvious, as all of its dialects shared a series of innovations. Several scholars have published reconstructions of Proto-West-Germanic morphological paradigms and many authors have reconstructed individual Proto-West-Germanic morphological forms or lexemes, the first comprehensive reconstruction of the Proto-West-Germanic language was published in 2013 by Wolfram Euler. If indeed Proto-West-Germanic existed, it must have been between the 3rd and 7th centuries, after that, the split into West and North Germanic occurred. It has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, over the course of this period, the dialects diverged successively. Bordering dialects very probably continued to be mutually intelligible even beyond the boundaries of the consonant shift, in fact, many dialects of Limburgish and Ripuarian are still mutually intelligible today. The High German consonant shift distinguished the High German languages from the other West Germanic languages, by early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon in the North. Although both extremes are considered German, they are not mutually intelligible, the southernmost varieties have completed the second sound shift, whereas the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift. Of modern German varieties, Low German is the one that most resembles modern English, the district of Angeln, from which the name English derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons lay south of Anglia, the Anglo-Saxons, two Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern Germany and the Jutland Peninsula. Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely defined, most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible. Also note that English is part of the North Sea Germanic branch of the West Germanic languages, some may only appear in the older languages but are no longer apparent in the modern languages

13.
High German languages
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They are also spoken in diaspora in Romania, Russia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia. The High German languages are marked by the High German consonant shift, separating them from Low German and Low Franconian within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. As a technical term, the high in High German is a reference to the group of dialects that forms High German, out of which developed Standard German. It refers to the Central Uplands and Alpine areas of central and southern Germany, it also includes Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein and this is opposed to Low German, which is spoken in the lowlands and along the flat sea coasts of the North German Plain. High German in this sense can be subdivided into Upper German, Central German. High German is distinguished from other West Germanic varieties in that it took part in the High German consonant shift, to see this, compare English/Low German pan/Pann with Standard German Pfanne, English/Low German two/twee with Standard German zwei, English/Low German make/maken with Standard German machen. In the southernmost High Alemannic dialects, there is a further shift, the term High German as spoken in central and southern Germany and Austria was first documented in the 15th century. Divisions between subfamilies within Germanic are rarely defined, because most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible. In particular, there has never been an original Proto-High German, for this and other reasons, the idea of representing the relationships between West Germanic language forms in a tree diagram at all is controversial among linguists. What follows should be used with care in the light of this caveat

High German languages
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Central German dialects

14.
Isogloss
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An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some syntactic feature. However, an individual isogloss may or may not have any coincidence with a language border, for example, the front-rounding of /y/ cuts across France and Germany, while the /y/ is absent from Italian and Spanish words that are cognates with the /y/-containing French words. One of the most well-known isoglosses is the centum-satem isogloss, similar to an isogloss, an isograph is a distinguishing feature of a writing system. Both concepts are used in historical linguistics. The centum-satem isogloss of the Indo-European language family relates to the different evolution of the consonants of Proto-Indo-European. They are known as branches, named after the Latin word for hundred. In other branches, the merged with the velars, PIE *keup- became Vedic Sanskrit kopáyati shaken. They are known as branches, after the Avestan word for hundred. A feature of the ancient Northwest Semitic languages is w becoming y at the beginning of a word, thus, in Proto-Semitic and subsequent non-Northwest Semitic languages and dialects, the root letters for a word for child were w-l-d. However, in the ancient Northwest Semitic languages, the word was y-l-d, similarly, Proto-Semitic ā becomes ō in the Canaanite dialects of Northwest Semitic. Within the Aramaic languages and dialects of Northwest Semitic, the historic ā is preserved, thus, an ancient Northwest Semitic language whose historic ā became ō can be classed as part of the Canaanite branch of Northwest Semitic. Such features can be used as data of fundamental importance for the purposes of linguistic classification, just as there are distinguishing features of related languages, there are also distinguishing features of related scripts. For example, a feature of the Iron Age Old Hebrew script is that the letters bet, dalet, ayin and resh do not have an open head. Similarly, the bet of Old Hebrew has a distinctive stance, the term isogloss is inspired by contour lines, or isopleths, such as isobars. However, the isogloss separates rather than connects points, consequently, it has been proposed for the term heterogloss to be used instead. Dialect Dialectology Dialect continuum Cultural boundary Joret line Uerdingen line Chambers, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages. An example of an isogloss in Southern England, beyond the Isogloss, The Isograph in Dialect Topography, A discussion of the shortcomings and oversimplifications of using isoglosses. On Some Acoustic Correlates of Isoglossy, A humorous analysis of Russian isoglossy

15.
Standard German
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Standard German is the standardized variety of the German language used in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas. It is a pluricentric Dachsprache with three codified specific regional variants, German Standard German, Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German, adherence is obligatory not for everyday use but for government institutions including schools. Adherence to those standards by private individuals and companies, including the print and audio-visual media, is voluntary, until about 1800, Standard German was almost entirely a written language. In this time, people in Northern Germany, who mainly spoke Low Saxon languages very different from Standard German, learned it as a foreign language. Currently, local dialects are used mainly in informal situations or at home and also in dialect literature, in German linguistics, only the traditional regional varieties of German are called dialects, not the different varieties of standard German. The latter are known as Umgangssprachen and in the territory of Germany began to replace the traditional dialects beginning in the nineteenth century and they constitute a mixture of old dialectal elements with Standard German. In German, Standard German is often called Hochdeutsch, a misleading term since it collides with the linguistic term High German. To avoid this confusion, some refer to Standard German as Standarddeutsch, deutsche Standardsprache, or if the context of the German language is clear, simply Standardsprache. Traditionally, though, the language spoken in the mountainous areas of southern Germany is referred to as Oberdeutsch. The most accepted distinction is between different national varieties of standard German, Austrian Standard German, Germany Standard German and Swiss Standard German, additionally, there are linguists who posit that there are different varieties of standard German within Germany. Linguistic research of the different varieties of standard German began for the most part only in the 1990s, especially in Austria, the German federal state of Bavaria has promoted language diversity in the past in an effort to preserve its distinct culture. The different varieties of standard German differ only in a few features, especially in vocabulary and pronunciation, the variation of the standard German varieties must not be confused with the variation of the local German dialects. Even though the standard German varieties are to a certain degree influenced by the local dialects, in most regions, the speakers use a continuum of mixtures from more dialectical varieties to more standard varieties according to situation. Since the former have not undergone the High German consonant shift, under a socio-linguistic approach to the problem, even if Low German dialects are Abstandsprachen, they are dialects of German, because they lack Ausbau. However, Low German did influence the standard-based vernaculars spoken today in Northern Germany by language transfer, High German heavily influenced by Low German has been known as Missingsch, but most contemporary Northern Germans exhibit only an intermediate Low German substratum in their speech. Therefore, this situation has been called a medial diglossia, although Luxembourgish is no longer considered a German dialect today but a language, the situation can be compared to that of Switzerland. Standard German is also taught in schools in Luxembourg and close to 90% of the population can speak it and this accent is documented in reference works such as Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch by Eva-Maria Krech et al. Duden 6 Das Aussprachewörterbuch by Max Mangold and the materials at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk

Standard German
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The national and regional standard varieties of the German language.

16.
Rhineland
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The Rhineland is the name used for a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine River, chiefly its middle section. In the High Middle Ages, numerous Imperial States along the river emerged from the stem duchy of Lotharingia. The term covered the whole occupied zone west of the Rhine including the bridge-heads on the eastern banks, after the collapse of the French dominated West Bank in the early 19th century, the regions of Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg were annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1822 the Prussian administration reorganized the territory as the Rhine Province, following the First World War, the western part of Rhineland was occupied by Entente forces, then demilitarized under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. German forces remilitarized the territory in 1936, as part of a diplomatic test of will, stretching down to the North Palatine Uplands in the south, this area, except for the Saarland, more or less corresponds with the modern use of the term. The southern and eastern parts are mainly hill country, cut by valleys, principally the Middle Rhine up to Bingen and its Ahr, Moselle. The border of the North German plain is marked by the lower Ruhr, in the south, the river cuts the Rhenish Massif. The area encompasses the western part of the Ruhr industrial region, toponyms as well as local family names often trace back to the Frankish heritage. The lands on the shore of the Rhine are strongly characterised by Roman influence. In the core territories, large parts of the population are members of the Catholic Church. On the right bank of the Rhine, between the Main and the Lahn, were the settlements of the Mattiaci, a branch of the Germanic Chatti, while farther to the north were the Usipetes and Tencteri. Julius Caesar conquered the tribes on the left bank, and Augustus established numerous fortified posts on the Rhine. The Frankish conquerors of the Rhenish districts were singularly little affected by the culture of the Roman provincials they subdued, by the 8th century the Frankish dominion was firmly established in western Germania and northern Gaul. On the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun the part the province to the east of the fell to East Francia. As the central power of the Holy Roman Emperor weakened, the Rhineland split up into small independent principalities, each with its separate vicissitudes. After the Imperial Reform of 1500/12, the territory was part of the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian, Upper Rhenish, aachen was the place of coronation of the German emperors, and the ecclesiastical principalities of the Rhine played a large role in German history. At the Peace of Basel in 1795, the whole of the bank of the Rhine was taken by France. The population was about 1.6 million in small states

17.
Moselle
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The Moselle is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg, and Germany. It is a tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is also drained by the Moselle through the Sauer, the Moselle twists and turns its way between Trier and Koblenz along one of Germanys most beautiful river valleys. It flows through a region that has influenced by mankind since it was first cultivated by the Romans. Today, its hillsides are covered by terraced vineyards where some of the best Rieslings grow, Traben-Trarbach with its art nouveau architecture and Bernkastel-Kues with its traditional market square are two of the many popular tourist attractions on the Moselle river. The name Moselle is derived from the Celtic name form, Moseal, via the Latin Mosella, a form of Mosa, the Latin description of the Meuse. So the Mosella was the Little Meuse, the Moselle is first recorded by Tacitus in Book 13 of his Annals and in Book 4 of his Histories. The Roman poet, Decimius Magnus Ausonius, made it a theme as early as the 4th century. In his poem dated A. D. Ausonius describes flourishing and rich landscapes along the river and in the valley of the Moselle, the river subsequently gave its name to two French republican départements, Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle. The source of the Moselle is at 715 metres above sea level on the Col de Bussang on the slopes of the Ballon dAlsace in the Vosges. After 544 kilometres it discharges into the Rhine at the Deutsches Eck in Koblenz at a height of 59 metres above NHN. The length of the river in France is 314 kilometres, for 39 kilometres it forms the border between Germany and Luxembourg, and 208 kilometres are solely within Germany, the Moselle flows through the Lorraine region, west of the Vosges. Further downstream, in Germany, the Moselle valley forms the division between the Eifel and Hunsrück mountain regions. The average flow rate of the Moselle at its mouth is 328 m³/s, making it the second largest tributary of the Rhine by volume after the Aare and bigger than the Main and Neckar. The section of the Moselle from the Franco-German-Luxembourg tripoint to its confluence with the Saar near Konz shortly before Trier is in Germany known as the Upper Moselle. The section from Trier to Pünderich is the Middle Moselle, the section between Pünderich and its mouth in Koblenz as the Lower Moselle or Terraced Moselle. Characteristic of the Middle and Lower Moselle are its wide meanders cut deeply into the highlands of the Rhenish Massif, also typical are its vineyard terraces. From the tripoint the Moselle marks the entire Saarland-Luxembourg, the catchment area of the Moselle is 28,286 km² in area

18.
Siegerland
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The Siegerland is a region of Germany covering the old district of Siegen and the upper part of the district of Altenkirchen, belonging to the Rhineland-Palatinate adjoining it to the west. Geologically, the Siegerland belongs to the Rheinisches Schiefergebirge, the point of highest elevation is the Riemen, at 678 metres above sea level. The region around the city of Siegen is centered in the middle of Germany, Siegerland, general and tourist information History of the coppices, or Hauberge Information on and history of local mining This article is based on the German Wikipedia article

19.
German-speaking Community of Belgium
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The German-speaking Community of Belgium is one of the three federal communities of Belgium. Covering an area of 854 km2 within the province of Liège in Wallonia, traditionally speakers of Low Dietsch, Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian varieties, the local population numbers over 75, 000—about 0. 70% of the national total. Bordering the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg, the area has its own parliament and government at Eupen, the German-speaking Community of Belgium is composed of the German-speaking parts of the lands that were annexed in 1920 from Germany. However, in these localities, the German language is declining due to the expansion of French, the area known today as the East Cantons consists of the German-speaking Community and the municipalities of Malmedy and Waimes, which belong to the French Community of Belgium. The East Cantons were part of the Rhine Province of Prussia in Germany until 1920, but were annexed by Belgium following Germanys defeat in World War I, thus they also became known as the cantons rédimés, redeemed cantons. The peace treaty of Versailles demanded the questioning of the local population, in the mid-1920s, there were secret negotiations between Germany and the kingdom of Belgium that seemed to be inclined to sell the region back to Germany as a way to improve Belgiums finances. A price of 200 million gold marks has been mentioned, at this point the French government, fearing for the complete postwar order, intervened at Brussels and the Belgian-German talks were called off. The new cantons had been part of Belgium for just 20 years when in 1940 they were retaken by Germany in World War II, the majority of people of the east cantons welcomed this as they considered themselves German. In 1973, three communities and three regions were established and granted internal autonomy, the legislative Parliament of the German-speaking Community, Rat der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft, was set up. Today the German-speaking Community has a degree of autonomy, especially in language and cultural matters. One of the proponents of full autonomy for the German-speaking Community is Karl-Heinz Lambertz. Especially regional autonomy for spatial planning, city building and housing should be considered, the German-speaking Community has its own government, which is appointed for five years by its own parliament. The Government is headed by a Minister-President, who acts as the minister of the Community. Compare to a total of 73,675 on 1 January 2007, in 1989, there was a call for proposals for a flag and arms of the Community. In the end the coat of arms of the Community was designed by merging the arms of the Duchy of Limburg, the coat of arms, in heraldic blazon, is, Arms, Argent, a lion rampant gules between nine cinquefoils azure. The flag shows a red lion together with nine blue cinquefoils on a white field, the colours of the German-speaking Community are white and red in a horizontal position. Government website Parliament website KOKAISL, Petr, KOKAISLOVÁ, Pavla, journal of Social Research & Policy, Vol.6, Issue 1, July 2015

German-speaking Community of Belgium
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The Executive (government) of the German-speaking Community meets in Eupen.
German-speaking Community of Belgium
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German-speaking Community Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft (German) Communauté germanophone (French) Duitstalige Gemeenschap (Dutch)
German-speaking Community of Belgium
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1943 postcard with Nazi propaganda stamp " Heimkehr ins Grossdeutsche Vaterland " ("Return to the Great German Fatherland")
German-speaking Community of Belgium
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The seat of the Executive and Council of the German-speaking Community in Eupen

20.
Moselle (department)
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Moselle is the most populous department in Lorraine, in the east of France, and is named after the river Moselle, a tributary of the Rhine, which flows through the western part of the department. Inhabitants of the department are known as Mosellans, Moselle is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4,1790. It was created from the province of Lorraine. One of its first prefects was the comte de Vaublanc, from 1805 to 1814, by the Treaty of Paris of 1814 following the first defeat and abdication of Napoleon, France had to surrender almost all the territory it had conquered since 1792. In northeastern France, the Treaty did not restore the 1792 borders, however, as a result, France ceded the exclave of Tholey as well as a few communes near Sierck-les-Bains to Austria. France thus became a net beneficiary of the Treaty of Paris, all the new territories ceded to her being far larger, all these new territories were incorporated into the Moselle department, and so Moselle had now a larger territory than ever since 1790. However, with the return of Napoleon and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Tholey and the communes around Sierck-les-Bains were still to be ceded as agreed in 1814, at the end of 1815 Austria transferred all these territories to Prussia, making for the first time a shared border for those two states. Thus, by the end of 1815, the Moselle department had finally the limits that it would keep until 1871, between 1815 and 1871, the department had an area of 5,387 km². It had four arrondissements, Metz, Briey, Sarreguemines, France merged the remaining area of Briey with the truncated Meurthe department to create the new Meurthe-et-Moselle department with its préfecture at Nancy. In 1919, following the French victory in the First World War, however, it was decided not to recreate the old separate departments of Meurthe and Moselle by reverting to the old department borders of before 1871. Instead, Meurthe-et-Moselle was left untouched, and the part of Lorraine was reconstituted as the new department of Moselle. Thus, the Moselle department was reborn, but with different borders from those before 1871. The new Moselle department now reached its current area of 6,216 km², larger than the old Moselle because the areas of Château-Salins and Sarrebourg were far larger than the area of Briey and Longwy. At the declaration of World War II on September 3,1939 around 30% of Moselles territory lay between the Maginot Line and the German front,302,732 people, around 45% of the departments population, were evacuated to departments in central and western France during September 1939. Of those evacuated, around 200,000 returned after the war, in spite of the June 22,1940 armistice, Moselle was again annexed by Germany in July of that year, it became part of the Gau Westmark. Adolf Hitler considered Moselle and Alsace parts of Germany, and as a result the inhabitants were drafted into the German Wehrmacht, several organized groups were formed in resistance to the German occupation, notably the Groupe Mario, led by Jean Burger, and the Groupe Derhan. During these years more than 10,000 Mosellans were deported to camps, many to the Sudetenland, the United States Army liberated Moselle from the Third Reich in the Battle of Metz in September 1944, although combat continued in the northeastern part of the department until March 1945

21.
Transylvanian Saxon dialect
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Transylvanian Saxon is the German dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons. It belongs to the Moselle Franconian group of West Central German dialects, the language was mainly spoken in Transylvania, Romania by persons of German origin who settled there in the 12th century. The majority of the speakers have emigrated in several waves to Germany, Austria, the USA, Canada and other Western countries, before the revolution of 1989 in Romania, the majority of the Transylvanian Saxons were still living in Transylvania. During the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, many thousands of Saxons were sold per capita for a amount of money paid to Romania by West Germany. By 1990, the number of Saxons living in Transylvania has decreased dramatically, after the fall of communism, during 1991—1994, the vast majority of those who remained in Transylvania emigrated to Germany, leaving just a minority of about 15,000 Transylvanian Saxons in Romania. The number of Transylvanian Saxon speakers today is estimated to be 200,000 persons and it is the native language of the current President of Romania Klaus Iohannis. Capesius, A. Tudt, S. Haldenwang et al

22.
Transylvania
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Transylvania is a historical region located in what is today the central part of Romania. Bound on the east and south by its borders, the Carpathian mountain range. The term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the regions of Crișana, Maramureș. The region of Transylvania is known for the beauty of its Carpathian landscape. It also contains major cities such as Cluj-Napoca, Brașov, Sibiu, in the English-speaking world it has been commonly associated with vampires, due to the influence of Bram Stokers famous novel Dracula and its many film adaptations. Transylvania was first referred to in a Medieval Latin document in 1075 as ultra silvam, Transylvania, with an alternative Latin prepositional prefix, means on the other side of the woods. Hungarian historians claim that the Medieval Latin form Ultrasylvania, later Transylvania, was a translation from the Hungarian form Erdő-elve. That also was used as an name in German überwald. The German name Siebenbürgen means seven fortresses, after the seven Transylvanian Saxons cities in the region and this is also the origin of the regions name in many other languages, such as the Bulgarian Седмиградско, Polish Siedmiogród and the Ukrainian Семигород. The Hungarian form Erdély was first mentioned in the 12th-century Gesta Hungarorum as Erdeuleu or Erdő-elve, the word Erdő means forest in Hungarian, and the word Elve denotes a region in connection with this, similarly to the Hungarian name for Muntenia. Erdel, Erdil, Erdehstan, the Turkish equivalents, or the Romanian Ardeal were borrowed from this form as well, the first known written occurrence of the Romanian name Ardeal appeared in a document in 1432 as Ardeliu. Transylvania has been dominated by different peoples and countries throughout its history. It was once the nucleus of the Kingdom of Dacia, in 106 AD the Roman Empire conquered the territory, systematically exploiting its resources. After the Roman legions withdrew in 271 AD, it was overrun by a succession of tribes, bringing it under the control of the Carpi, Visigoths, Huns, Gepids, Avars. From 9th to 11th century Bulgarians ruled Transylvania, there is an ongoing scholarly debate over the ethnicity of Transylvanias population before the Hungarian conquest. The Magyars conquered much of Central Europe at the end of the 9th century, according to Gesta Hungarorum, Transylvania was ruled by the Vlach voivode Gelou before the Hungarians arrived. The Kingdom of Hungary established a control over Transylvania in 1003. Between 1003 and 1526, Transylvania was a voivodeship in the Kingdom of Hungary, after the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of János Szapolyai

23.
Transylvanian Saxons
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The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of German ethnicity who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards. The colonization of Transylvania by Germans was begun by King Géza II of Hungary, for decades, the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary. The colonization continued until the end of the 13th century, the Transylvanian Saxon population has decreased since World War II. Transylvanian Saxons started leaving Transylvania during and after World War II, settling first in Austria, the process of emigration continued during Communist rule in Romania, and even into the collapse of the Ceaușescu regime in 1989 when approximately half a million fled to homeland Germany. The great majority of Transylvanian Saxons now live in Germany, a sizable Transylvanian Saxon population also resides today in the United States, notably in Idaho, Ohio and Colorado and in Southern Ontario, Canada. Relatively few still live in Romania, where at the last official census around 37,000 Germans were registered, most colonists to this area came from Luxembourg and the Moselle River region. A settlement in northeastern Transylvania was centered on the town of Nösen, the surrounding area became known as the Nösnerland. Continued immigration from the Empire expanded the area of the Saxons further to the east, settlers from the Hermannstadt region spread into the Hârtibaciu River valley and to the foot of the Cibin and Sebeș mountains. The latter region, centered on the city of Mühlbach was known as the Unterwald, to the north of Hermannstadt was settled the Weinland e. g. Nympz near Mediasch. The term Saxon was applied to all Germans of the regions because the first German settlers who came to the Hungarian kingdom were poor miners or convicted groups from Saxony. In 1211 King Andrew II of Hungary invited the Teutonic Knights to settle, to guard the mountain passes of the Carpathians against the Cumans, the Knights constructed numerous castles and towns, including the major city of Kronstadt. Alarmed by the Knights rapidly expanding power, in 1225 Andrew II expelled the Order, although the knights had left Transylvania, the Saxon colonists remained, and the king allowed them to retain the rights and obligations included within the Diploma Andreanum of 1224. This document conferred upon the German population of the territory between Draas and Broos both administrative and religious autonomy and obligations towards the kings of Hungary, the territory that was colonized by Germans covered an area of about 30,000 km². During the reign of King Charles I of Hungary, the Saxons were organized in the Saxon Chairs, along with the Teutonic Order, other religious organizations important to the development of German communities were the Cistercian abbeys of Igrisch in the Banat region and Cârța in Fogarasch. The earliest religious organization of the Saxons was the Provostship of Szeben/Hermannstadt, in its early years, it included the territories of Hermannstadt, Leschkirch, and Groß-Schenk, the areas that were colonized the earliest by ethnic Germans in the region. e. The national church of Transylvanian Saxons, birthälm, with its fortified church, was the see of the Lutheran Evangelical Bishop in Transylvania between 1572 and 1867. The Mongol invasion of 1241–42 devastated much of the Kingdom of Hungary, although the Saxons did their best to resist, many settlements were destroyed. In the aftermath of the invasion, many Transylvanian towns were fortified with stone castles, in the Middle Ages, about 300 villages were defended by Kirchenburgen, or fortified churches with massive walls

24.
Luxembourgish
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Luxembourgish, Luxemburgish or Letzeburgesch is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. Worldwide, about 390,000 people speak Luxembourgish, despite the lack of a sharp boundary between Luxembourgish and the neighboring German dialects, this has led several linguists to regard it as a separate, yet closely related language. Luxembourgish belongs to the West Central German group of High German languages and is the example of a Moselle Franconian language. Luxembourgish is the language of Luxembourg and one of three administrative languages, alongside French and German. Luxembourgish is also spoken in the Arelerland region of Belgium and in parts of Lorraine in France. In the German Eifel and Hunsrück regions, and in Lorraine, Moselle Franconian dialects outside the Luxembourg state border tend to have far fewer French loan words, and these mostly remain from the French Revolution. There are several distinct forms of Luxembourgish including Areler, Eechternoacher, Kliärrwer, Miseler, Stater, Veiner, Minetter and Weelzer. Further small vocabulary differences may be even between small villages. There is no distinct boundary between the use of Luxembourgish and the use of other closely related High German dialects, it instead forms a dialect continuum of gradual change. Spoken Luxembourgish is relatively hard to understand for speakers of German who are not familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects. However, they can read the language to some degree. For those Germans familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects, it is easy to understand. However, the number of French loanwords in Luxembourgish may hamper communication about certain topics. There is no intelligibility between Luxembourgish and French or any of the Romance dialects spoken in the adjacent parts of Belgium, erna Hennicot-Schoepges, President of the Christian Social Peoples Party of Luxembourg 1995–2003, was active in promoting the language beyond Luxembourgs borders. A number of proposals for standardising the orthography of Luxembourgish can be documented, there was no officially recognised system, however, until the adoption of the OLO on 5 June 1946. The rules explicitly rejected certain elements of German orthography, similarly, new principles were adopted for the spelling of French loanwords. A more successful standard eventually emerged from the work of the committee of specialists charged with the task of creating the Luxemburger Wörterbuch, published in 5 volumes between 1950 and 1977. The orthographic conventions adopted in this project, set out in Bruch

25.
Lorraine Franconian
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The term Lorraine Franconian has multiple denotations. Some scholars use it to refer to the group of West Central German dialects spoken in the French Lorraine region. In 1806 there were 218,662 speakers of Lorraine Franconian in Moselle and 41,795 speakers in Meurthe. In part from the ambiguity of the term, estimates of the number of speakers of Lorraine Franconian in France vary widely, ranging from 30,000 to 400,000. The most reliable data comes from the Enquête famille carried out by INSEE as part of the 1999 census, approximately 78,000 people were reported to speak Lorraine Franconian, but fewer than 50,000 passed basic knowledge of the language on to their children. Another statistic illustrating the point is that of all adult men who used Franconian regularly when they were 5. Langues régionales et relations transfrontalières dans l’espace Saar-Lor-Lux, la dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle. Bilingualism in North-East France with specific reference to Rhenish Franconian spoken by Moselle Cross-border workers, in Preisler, Bent, et al. eds. The Consequences of Mobility, Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones, Roskilde, Denmark, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Institut for Sprog og Kultur. — Historical, literary, and linguistic information Gau un Griis — Association for the defense and promotion of Lorraine Franconian Plattweb

26.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama

27.
Rhine Franconian
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Rhine Franconian, or Rhenish Franconian, is a dialect family of West Central German. It comprises the German dialects spoken across the regions of the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, northwest Baden-Wurttemberg. It is also spoken in northeast France, in the part of the département of Moselle in the Lorraine region. Hessian Palatinate German Lorraine Franconian Saarland, Moselle Franconian Hughes, Stephanie, bilingualism in North-East France with specific reference to Rhenish Franconian spoken by Moselle Cross-border workers. In Preisler, Bent, et al. eds, the Consequences of Mobility, Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones. Roskilde, Denmark, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Institut for Sprog og Kultur

28.
Meuse-Rhenish
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Meuse-Rhenish is a modern term that refers to the literature written in the Middle Ages in the greater Meuse-Rhine area. This area stretches in the triangle roughly between the rivers Meuse and Rhine. It also applies to the Low Franconian dialects that have spoken in that area in continuation from mediaeval times up to now. It includes varieties of South Guelderish and Limburgish in the Belgian and Dutch provinces of Limburg, with regard to this German part only, Meuse-Rhenish equals the total of Low Rhenish vernaculars. Low Rhenish is the name in German for the regional Low Franconian language varieties spoken alongside the so-called Lower Rhine in the west of Germany. Low Franconian is a language or dialect group that has developed in the parts of the Frankish Empire. From this group both the Dutch and later the Afrikaans standard languages have arisen, the differences between Low Rhenish and Low Saxon are smaller than between Low Rhenish and High German. Yet, Low Rhenish does not belong to Low German, therefore, it could properly be called German Dutch. Indeed, Deutschniederländisch was the term under the Prussian Reign of the 19th century. Low Rhenish differs strongly from High German, the more to the north it approaches the Netherlands, the more it sounds like Dutch. As it crosses the Dutch-German as well as the Dutch-Belgian borders, in two of them Dutch is the standard language. The eastmost varieties of the latter, east of the Rhine from Düsseldorf to Wuppertal, are referred to as Low Bergish, Limburgish is recognised as a regional language in the Netherlands. As such, it receives protection under chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The area in which Limburgish is spoken roughly fits within a circle from Venlo to Düsseldorf to Aachen to Maastricht to Hasselt. In German sources, the dialects linguistically counting as Limburgish spoken east of the river Rhine are often called Bergish, west of the river Rhine they are called Low Rhenish, Limburgish or Ripuarian. Limburgish is not recognised by the German government as an official language, Low Rhenish is considered as a group of dialects in Germany. Together all these belong to a greater continuum, this superordinating group is called Meuse-Rhenish. These insights are rather new among dialectologists on both sides of the national Dutch-German border, German population in the Meuse-Rhine area are used to let the geographic Lower Rhine area begin approximately with the Benrath line, coincidentally

29.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker

International Standard Book Number
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A 13-digit ISBN, 978-3-16-148410-0, as represented by an EAN-13 bar code

30.
Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format